This invention relates to fishing lures and methods of making them, and more particularly to improved multicolored and salt emitting soft, flexible plastic lures.
Tubular soft plastic fishing lures have been made by coating a solid metal mandrel with molten plastic resin, allowing the plastic to harden and then removing the resulting hollow tubular lure from the mandrel. Attempts to make such tubular lures with two distinct colors from two differently colored thermoplastic resins have not been successful because the plastics run together and the colors become cloudy or mix into an off color when one or both plastics is hot enough to melt. The clouding of the plastics prevents transmission of light through lures that are made from translucent plastics.
The molten plastic from which such soft plastic lures are made has been impregnated with powdered salt in order to impart a salty taste to the lures. This dispersion of finely divided salt throughout the plastic makes the lure colors dull and difficult to control, and the impregnated salt makes translucent plastic lures look cloudy instead of clear, and it diminishes the effectiveness of tiny reflective speckles dispersed within translucent plastics. Also, impregnation with salt distorts the shape of some lure bodies, and impregnation of salt into the interior of a lure delays the release and dissolving of the salt into the water. Plastic lures impregnated with powdered salt are usually lost or damaged before all of the salt can migrate from the interior of the lure into the water being fished, so the salt remaining in the lure is wasted.